Jump for History

Donald Trump wants to rewrite American history for the Smithsonian

Last week, Donald Trump ordered that there be “warning” signs installed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History to alert the public that the museum does not “accurately” reflect American history in his view. Fun fact: Donald Trump is not a historian.

Trump made the directive through an executive order, which also suggests that the signs inform potential museum visitors of locations where American history is better presented, though the order does not make any suggestions of such places itself. But I'm thinking, Prager U, any public Texas elementary school, or any fucknut who works for Fox News. Maybe Scott Jennings (CNN), Greg Gutfeld, Laura Ingraham, and the MyPillow Fucker will be suggested.

Right before July 4, the White House posted a condemnation of the Smithsonian on its website, accusing it of failing to celebrate the nation’s heritage, arguing it had become a political tool intent on denigrating the American story.

The Trump regime has been pressuring the Smithsonian to present what Trump has described as “patriotic” history. The Smithsonian Institution oversees 21 museums and the National Zoo, and is supposed to be independent from political meddling, but meddling with it, Trump be.

The White House’s Domestic Policy Council has issued a 162-page report that is a sweeping attack on the museum’s presentation of American history.

The report, titled “Saving America’s Story: How Ideological Capture at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage,” accuses the museum of anti-white bias and of minimizing and distorting the nation’s founding. The report asserts that those actions have shifted the museum’s mission “from straightforward historical education and scholarship toward an extreme political activism that seeks to transform our country.”

Remember, Donald Trump rewrote the bios of each president underneath their portraits at the White House, where Joe Biden's portrait is of an auto pen.

The report says that the museum “no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated but as a political instrument to divide, dispirit and discourage our citizens.”

The report takes issue with specific exhibits, such as an 1840 statue of George Washington that includes a depiction of Hercules. The work’s accompanying text describes “the perceived courage of the American people.” That language, the report says, “refuses to affirm the exceptional courage of the American people.”

But the report’s “main concerns” involve what is not there.
Visitors today, it says, “will find no major exhibit dedicated to America’s founding era, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, other founding fathers, the Continental Congress, the pilgrims, the Puritans or major moments of the American Revolution.” Instead, it claims, many founders are presented chiefly in terms of their connection to slavery.

I would like to point out that the museum also does not have an exhibit on American Revolutionary War airports.

The report criticizes the museum for viewing “traditional patriotic narratives” with suspicion or contempt. It says the museum endorses illegal immigration and advocates transgender issues, while it focuses on Christianity as “an instrument of conquest, exclusion or cultural erasure,” rather than its “constructive role” in “shaping the nation and its freedoms.”

The report criticized an exhibition called “Many Voices, One Nation” that it claims tries “to convince visitors that illegal aliens are entitled to citizenship, voting rights and ‘belonging’ in America.”

The report also criticized an exhibition that closed in November 2025, “The Electric Dr. Franklin,” for what it says was too heavy an emphasis on Benjamin Franklin’s connection to slavery, including his ownership of slaves, and not enough on his work as an abolitionist.

It's almost as if the report does not want the Smithsonian to mention the ugly side of American history, such as slavery, the Trail of Tears, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, segregation, or that Thomas Jefferson fucked his slaves.

The Domestic Policy Council, which wrote the report, is a White House group tasked with developing Trump’s domestic agenda and advising him on issues like education and health care. Its leader, Vince Haley, has spearheaded the regime’s commemoration of the nation’s 250th anniversary, including Trump’s plan to build a 250-foot arch in Arlington National Cemetery, overlooking Washington, DC. Haley has also been credited with the idea for a patriotic sculpture garden known as the National Garden of American Heroes.

Last March, Trump issued an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which called on JD Vance to overhaul the Smithsonian with the help of Congress. The order described a “revisionist movement” across the country that “seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”

After that order was issued, Trump announced that he was dismissing the director of the institution’s National Portrait Gallery, Kim Sajet, calling her “a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI.” The Smithsonian ignored the order, citing its independence, but Sajet resigned anyway.

Trump also issued an ultimatum for the museum to turn over its records or face steep budget cuts. Trump proposed cutting the Smithsonian’s budget by about 12 percent, but Congress has maintained its federal funding nonetheless.

All this sounds like it fits into our theme of fascism from yesterday.

Last week, the museum's director, Anthea M. Hartig, was grilled by Republicans in two congressional hearings. Trump’s report accuses Hartig of “radical activist ideology” and the museum of undermining “faith in American institutions.” During the hearings, she was accused of teaching “national self-loathing.”

Trump's order for the warning signs says that they “shall notify visitors that the museum exhibits should be renovated consistent with the findings in the report and direct visitors to locations and resources for accurate information regarding America’s history.”
“Because the museum has failed to appropriately honor the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence during this 250th anniversary year of the founding of our country, government agencies shall install temporary exhibits or signage on N.P.S.-maintained sidewalks, walkways, and land used by the public that corrects inaccurate information presented in the museum.”

The Trump regime is trying to rewrite history and make it a white-friendly history. They want to teach a history where no white person ever did anything bad to non-white people, and all the minorities sang to them, “happy happy, joy, joy."

Creative note: I have fun writing these kinds of cartoons, but I do not enjoy lettering them.

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